* Alan Spicer’s Note First: Well … let the best company win. Someone has to be FIRST. I think Verizon has “hit” first before in cellular 3G’ish things. All other chalks will follow … as they said in that movie Blackhawk Down. (Check for survivors and secure the area. All other chalks will follow. Over. 2-5, do you read me, over?) Hopefully “you can hear me know?” the systems will work good. What I really hope for is that this is a bit of a convergence of technologies … cellular companies all getting on LTE a next-generation of GSM and UMTS. It would really be nice to have end-user equipment be cross compatible with multiple cellular companies … therefore allowing competition and a chance for savings for the people! That might be difficult though with different radio frequency spectrum allocations that were obtained by the cellular companies. And no doubt they would still like to have you on a locked device … a “locked phone” to one company. One ring to bind them all I guess.
One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
* Hopefully the LTE service is as good and as snazzy as the commercials…
http://gigaom.com/2010/11/22/verizon-please-dont-over-promise-on-lte/
Verizon, Please Don’t Over-Promise on LTE
By Jeff Belk Nov. 22, 2010, 3:30pm PDT
Watching Sunday Night Football last night, I was as surprised as anyone to see the Verizon Wireless “teaser” ads for the December launch of its initial LTE markets. I lived (painfully) through the launch of the initial 2G services in the mid-‘90s, and the launch of the initial 3G services of the early ’00s as the SVP of global marketing for Qualcomm �, which provides the chips in the handsets for Verizon’s CDMA network. I’ve been involved with the planned LTE roll outs since 2008, and was eagerly awaiting the marketing and consumer communication to see what the wireless industry would promise with Long Term Evolution 4G networks.
With that as a context for November 2010, it was great to finally see a consumer pitch for LTE. So I went to Verizon’s home page, and clicked on “Learn More.” That’s when my when-will-the-industry-ever-learn alarm bells started flashing. The “What can I do with it?” section reads in part: “Stream your favorite director’s cut without annoying buffering. Or better yet, download and view full-length HD quality movies…Watch live TV in mobile high definition right on your laptop.”
Oh, Verizon, why? Why set yourself up for over-promising? Being able to launch LTE in 38 markets and cover 110 million people by the end of 2010 is an amazing technical achievement, and took a mind-boggling effort. In one swoop, Verizon’s LTE Network will match and maybe even surpass Clearwire’s WiMAX network, and Clearwire has been building its network for years. And Verizon, you’re using a technology, LTE, which has global scope, is great for mobility from day one, and has an ongoing roadmap to LTE-Advanced, whereas the Clearwire folks, for all their protestations, could be dead meat unless they switch to the TDD version of LTE to compete.
(more at the link…)
* Jeff Belk seems to really know what he is talking about and he wrote the following in comments (there are more at the link) but he also wrote a document that he refers to. I’ll attach it here.
Jeffrey Belk
Monday, November 22 2010
Justin:
In the interest of keeping the piece short, I did not detail my background, but I started working in wireless in 1993, and was involved in the rollouts of lots of networks in my time in Qualcomm, including the initial Sprint PCS Nettwork (I actually was running the proposal team for the first PCS handset Sprint ended up purchasing). Qualcomm purchased Flarion in 2005 to augment Qualcomm’s 4G developments in both LTE and the next stage, LTE Advanced.
You (and others) might want to Google my name and WHYMAX, which is a piece I wrote (it is very long, and yes, I did write it) during the WiMax / 3G holy wars. My sections explaining wireless, wireless standards, and what it takes to make a product could be “search and replace” for some of the issues LTE (or wimax) has faced and will be facing as the rollout continues and the technology scales volumes.
Good news is time, money, and smart people end up making this stuff work…the things we take for granted an bitch about issue that exist would have been seen as total Science Fiction in the Mid-90′s…
Jeff Belk (his “WHYMAX” article here: WhyMax by Jeff Belk)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/211760/verizon_readies_lte_what_to_expect.html
Verizon Readies LTE: What to Expect
By Brad Reed, NetworkWorld Nov 27, 2010 8:35 am
Now that Verizon has started cranking up its hype machine for its LTE commercial launch next month, it’s fair to wonder just what types of devices will run on the network.
Initially it seems that Verizon’s LTE customers will be limited to USB dongles for their laptops. However they won’t have to wait very long for LTE-based smartphones to come out as some industry watchers expect them to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and to become commercially available shortly after. 4G technologies such as LTE and WiMAX represent the next stage in the evolution of wireless data technologies and generally deliver average download rates of 3Mbps or higher.
Verizon, Bluegrass Cellular bringing LTE to rural Kentucky
“They’ve moved up the timetable for LTE smartphones and now I’m hearing sometime in February 2011,” says ABI Research analyst Phil Solis. “There will be a bunch of devices out in the first half of next year and there will be a focus on tablets.”
(more at the link…)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Architecture_Evolution
—
Alan Spicer
Alan Spicer Marine Telecom and WiFIYacht.net
http://www.marinetelecom.net – http://www.wifiyacht.net
communications @ marinetelecom.net
+1 954-683-3426